GOOD NEWS: What the Bible says about Jesus’ cross (Good Friday Sermon)
The School of Suffering
· Kids home from school
· We all attend different schools and learn different lessons
· Everyone is now in the same school – suffering
· God, Jesus Christ, has graduated from this school
God, Jesus Christ, Suffered What You Suffer (Suffering Servant)
- Spiritual suffering: satanic attack – religious leaders, Judas
- Mental suffering: stress – “deeply troubled & distressed” – Mk 14:33
- Emotional suffering: anguish – wept, sweated like drops of blood
- Financial suffering: poverty
- Relational suffering: isolation thousands walked away
- Physical suffering: beatings – “marred beyond human likeness” Isa. 52:14
=Total suffering: crucifixion
Jesus Christ promised Good Friday and Easter Sunday
Matthew 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
-The Bible gives few details about crucifixion, ancient world saw.
Cross
- “an emblem of suffering & shame”
- Tertullian chose cross as the symbol of Christianity
- Crucifixion is state sponsored terror
- When Jesus a boy in 4 AD mass crucifixion of Jews for uprising against Rome
- In 71 BC when Spartacus died in battle 6000 followers crucified along 120 miles
Crucifixion
- Impailing started with Persians around 800 BC
- Romans perfected
- Stipe (permanent post) & patibulum (the crossbar).
- Death by asphyxiation took as long as 9 days
- Public like beheadings
- Women facing cross
Excruciating= “from the cross”
1.Jewish Josephus “most wretched of deaths”
2. Roman Cicero – Romans not crucified or speak of it
3. God’s people Deut. 21:22–23 “if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree… a hanged man is cursed by God.”
- Bodies often discarded
Jesus Crucifixion
- Sweating blood
- Blindfolded & beaten all night
- Scourged – flogged w/flagrum or cat-o-nine tails
- Skin, muscle, tendon, bones, lungs bruised
- Shock, blood loss, heart strained
- Rib fly off body
- Crown of thorns
- Carry 100lb cross for miles
- Collapsed, chest trauma
- Chest contusion & aneurysm, lungs filling carbon monoxide
- Like head on car crash
- Pulled bear, spit, cursed
- Nailed nerve centers
Jesus had 7 last words from the cross
#1. Luke 23:34 Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing
- Forgiveness
#2. Luke 23:43 I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise
- Hope
#3. John 19:26-27 Dear woman, here is your son…Here is your mother
- #1 emotion 60X “compassion”
#4. John 19:28 I am thirsty
- Sponge
#5. Matthew 27:46 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
- Ps. 22:1
- Substitution
- Great Exchange
- Omission & Commission
- Thought, Word, Deed, Motive
- Condition & Action
#6. John 19:30 It is finished
loud voice
#7. Luke 23:46 Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
- Spear then thrust into Jesus’ side
- Darkness fell
- Burial wrappings, tomb, stone, soldier
- Darkness
- Loss
How is Good Friday good news?
John 11:24-25 Jesus said [to a woman who’s brother died], “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
- Darkest day in human history followed by greatest victory in human history
- Death is a defeated enemy – Join us SUNDAY online for the rest of the story…
